Friday, February 18, 2011

Shrinking vs. Expanding

Have you noticed this... Some things in our lives are getting a lot smaller... and others are getting a lot bigger. Think of our electronics. TV's used to be huge clunky things that took up a tonne of space. Now they are slim and trim... Microwaves used to be huge... now they are the size of a breadbox... Stereos and record players and tapedecks and speakers... all used to be huge... now they are the size of iPods and a tiny set of speakers. Computers used to be the size of a house... now I have as more computing power in my laptop than did the first computer... So, some things are getting smaller... but then, many things are getting larger... Our personal libraries are getting smaller... fitting into an E-book reader...

Our houses are getting larger and larger... with huge vaulted ceilings and cavernous living rooms. Our vehicles are getting... larger... Big SUVs... The Smart Car really hasn't caught on. Our waistlines are getting larger... Our debt is getting larger...

There's something in here that strikes me as being a bit off... If things (like electronics) are getting smaller... why do we need bigger houses? Why is it that we feel the need for more space in our homes? Perhaps it is because we find ourselves surrounded by so many things?? But we aren't really surrounded by more things... theoretically... We can reduce our library collection by going to an E-book. We can reduce our collection of CDs and records and cassettes... and get an iPod player... And yet, what do we do with all that extra space? We fill it with something else.

We say that we want space, and yet when we have space, we fill it with more things... in order to buy a bigger house... What would it look like if we got a smaller house? If we had to use our space wisely? If we actually had to let go of things rather than saying... "I've got space to store this..."... Just wondering...

No comments: